Person Sheet

We obtained his passenger ship records from the National Archives. Interestingly, he listed his birth place as Gwozdziec, which is 140 miles southwest of Spie/Nart Nowy; and he listed his father as Kasper (not Jakub) Lasica, so perhaps Jakub Lasica went by Kasper. See the passenger records:

The Zeeland

After they met in 1912 and married on May 12, 1913, George and Katherine Lasica lived with George and Sophie (Lasica) Jadenski for a few years at 40 (or 39) Fourth St. in Passaic, NJ. By 1930 they had bought the wonderful house at 8 Herman St. in East Paterson, NJ (now Elmwood Park, a half block from Garfield). George became a naturalized citizen at age 42 in Hackensack, NJ, on Sept. 19, 1935. He worked most of his life as a baker. His children, when they became adults, called him “Pop,” though we called him Dziadziu (Ja-ju), for Grandfather. The family name Lasica is pronounced Wa-SHEE-tsa in the old country, since there’s no letter L in Polish. The family village of Spie is 135 miles south-southeast of Warsaw; the closest cities are Kolbuszowa and Rzeszow. Spie is less than 10 miles from Kamien, the hometown of Katherine Delenta. The two emigrated to the U.S. three years apart, met here, and married in 1913, 15 months after Wojciech’s arrival.

I have only fleeting memories of my grandfather, who died when I was 5; I do remember a Mr. Potato Head game he gave me and my brother. My father says George was a harsh man and a strict disciplinarian. But he was also the family patriarch and had the courage to leave for an unknown land at age 19.